Initiation
by Nitesh
Summary: A sorting into the Hufflepuff house is a first year's worst nightmare. But Hufflepuffs aren't the duffers they're made out to be, and there's some explaining to do.


Initiation

One word. That was all that it took. One word, and the world came crashing down around her ears. One word, and she felt the bottom drop out of her stomach, her face flush, and she couldn't help but lower her eyes to her feet in shame as she walked amid loud cheering to a place that she couldn't want to be in less.

Hufflepuff.

She wasn't the only one. One by one, other first years who met the same fate as she did sat down at the table and stared at their hands folded in their lap, other members of the house's congratulations going unnoticed. They didn't seem to realize the discomfort of their newest members, however, and began eating and laughing as soon as Headmaster Dumbledore finished a brief speech ("Blunder! Humdrum! Acid Pops!").

Now her feet were dragging as she followed after one Hufflepuff prefect in pigtails, who was pointing out everything of interest to the new first-years. And she tried to pay attention, tried to be interested and make the best of her situation, but she couldn't. Only one thing kept flashing through her mind and that thought was, _how do I sign up to get resorted?_

Though her mother was a Muggle, her father was a Gryffindor, and always said that she would be one just like he was. She looked up to him, and now she wasn't even following in his footsteps. What would he say? He had told her to write home as soon as she had gotten sorted. What could she even _write_?

It didn't help that at times he had remarked idly that Hufflepuffs were a bunch of idiots who didn't have a brain to split between them.

The small group turned down a short twisted staircase just a few hallways off the Great Hall, leading to a small hallway. Three people could hardly walk abreast down it, though it had a high ceiling that arched up out of sight. After a short moment's walk, the cramped hall opened up to a wide clearing. The floor of the room, like the hallway, was made of wood, as were the walls, which made for a refreshing, homely feel as opposed to the white marble the main passages were made with. Torches that bedecked the walls cast a sort of comforting glow around, and there were crates and barrels around the edges of the walls. It was the sort of room that gave one the impression of a cellar beneath a cozy restaurant.

Directly across from the hallway was a tall mirror, adorned with a golden frame. Spirals and curls of an old Gothic style wrapped itself around the rim, and the edges of the actual mirror were spotted with splotches of oxidized tarnish. It was very old, and seemed quite comfortably placed, even amongst the boxes and barrels.

The prefect girl stopped, and a few first-years stumbled as they quickly followed suit. They had been busy staring around them at the closed boxes. They had little time to poke around, though, as the girl suddenly spoke loudly out into the room.

"Muriel!"

For a short moment, nothing happened. Then a short first-year boy gasped, and pointed into the mirror, for a badger had just shouldered out from behind one of the boxes and turned to look at the prefect. All the first-years looked down, to where the Badger should have been only a few feet in front of them, but nothing was there, even as they heard the Badger's claws clack on the ground.

"Why, it's nothing put a reflecting picture!" said the same boy.

"Picture?" remarked the Badger, highly offended. "I am no picture. I am a portrait." The Badger bared its fangs briefly, but otherwise did not growl. "Password?" he instead asked the prefect, because Muriel was, in fact, a he.

"Pompous Preposterous," said the prefect with a little shake of her pigtails.

"And the same to you, madam," said the Badger stiffly, and he waddled away, vanishing behind a box as the mirror, quite suddenly, was no longer a mirror at all, but a doorway, in which the hallway through it turned out of sight- although there was loud talking and laughing, somewhere close by.

They climbed through the mirror hole one at a time, the girl still glum.

The Hufflepuff common room was a cozy, rectangular room with several squashy black armchairs in front of the fireplace. It had ledges on the back wall that had chairs lined up for it which she supposed were desks for studying, and although there weren't any windows, the ceiling was very much like the Great Hall's, although the Great Hall's was much more vast.

They had taken the long way back to the Hufflepuff House, this was evident. All the other students were there already, and every single one of them looked up at the first years as they walked in, and fell quiet.

The girl looked at them all stonily back. They looked normal enough- who would have thought that inside each one of them lurked an idiot?

One of the students finally stood up. He looked older then the rest and was solidly built, though rather short. He had neat brown hair, a large nose, and a good deal of freckles.

"Welcome to Hogwarts, first-years." He smirked. "I suppose you're all just thrilled to be here, correct?"

There were a few unenthusiastic mutters here and there from the group. The girl didn't say anything.

"I'm a seventh-year," he said. "And it is my self-appointed duty to introduce you all to the house." He stood and circled around the chair he had been sitting in and tapped it on the back. "So, how many of you don't want to be anywhere _near_ this house?"

Many first years stared at their feet, sheepish, but a few, the girl included, raised their hands completely unabashed. Several Hufflepuffs shuffled on their seats, crossing their arms, and one girl towards the back snarled a bitter "Hah!" before turning away. They all, however, remained otherwise resolutely silent. The first-year girl suddenly regretted it, and her hand wavered in the air.

The Hufflepuff boy didn't seem to mind, but ignored his housemates. On the contrary, his face broke out into a wide opened grin. "Oh, good," he said. Then he ruffled his hair with one hand, so that it looked rather lopsided instead of orderly. "Because we're a load of duffers? Can't do anything right? Are all squibs in disguise?"

No one said anything this time.

"As your representative of this house," he said openly, "I am happy to inform you of a secret, passed down from generation to generation, from Hufflepuff to Hufflepuff. No one knows it but full-blooded members of the house. The secret is this." He cleared his throat almost comically, and the first-years looked at each other, confused at this boldness that was supposed to be reserved to the Gryffindors.

"Not a single one of us is a duffer."

"Aye," muttered a girl who was seated on an ottoman. She had been listening to the seventh-year talk to the new students interestedly, but now dropped her head and continued knitting her scarf.

"Though," remarked the seventh-year absently, "I can see why we would be seen as such. Dear Helga Hufflepuff, she 'gladly took the rest'. It really doesn't seem as if we have any sort of redeeming quality at all if you look at it that way. That is actually one of our qualities, though people tend to look at it the wrong way. But I'm getting ahead of myself."

He paused for a moment. "Well. How to go about convincing you that Hufflepuff is better then Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin combined." He brushed his fingers lightly across his chin, looking deep in thought, before smiling again. "I know why. Everyone else hears knows why. It's funny, because I remember when I was a first-year I didn't believe my initiator at all when she told me. I went to my dorm that night truly miserable, just about ready to break into tears. My dormmates were in the same state, and none of us could sleep. We started going round in circles, saying things we already hated about Hufflepuff in the dark. We fell asleep eventually, and when we woke up we just became closer as we winded up almost late for our first class."

"Transfiguration with McGonagall," said a boy that had been sitting on a chair next to the initiator, shaking his head. "Almost turned us into newts."

The seventh-year continued. "Eventually we grew stronger as a class, us and the girls, too." His smile twisted slightly as he looked down at the scarf-knitting girl, who waved a needle in response. "I don't remember if any of us wanted to be in Hufflepuff. And eventually, when we realized that, we realized that because of this common _hatred_, we could make Hufflepuff however we wanted to. And we did. We thought that we were making it less Hufflepuff-y, but in reality, we were making it more so."

He turned to walked slowly around the common room, and the girl could see the fondness that was on his face as he glanced around. "We build this house every year as a team. It's a continuous process as folks leave and arrive. That's one thing we're known for that's accurate. We're a _team_. No one's left behind, and you'll make friends, this is true, but you'll also make a _family_."

He breathed deep through his mouth before speaking again. "Second point. Helga Hufflepuff took the rest Hufflepuff house is the most diverse lot here," he said. "You first-years, you look around. Every single person here is different from each other. You've all heard rot about how we're all nice and patient and kind. And some of us are. I bet you've also all heard someone say to another (and if you haven't, you will), 'Well, if you're having a bad day, go take it out on a Hufflepuff, they won't mind.' Bad idea. Some people are nice, and some of us who are mean and snarl, who people mistake for a Slytherin- though they have just as rotten a stereotype as we have. I've met some good folk from Slytherin, and you're just as likely to. But that's not the point."

"No, the point is to tell us why we're in a useless house instead of one devoted to bravery or wits." She couldn't help herself, and didn't mean to say it loudly, but in the common room's silence the words she had said weren't lost.

The room seemed to frost over, and the boy was looking down at the girl with a queer look in his eye. "You forget," he said, suddenly soft, "that once upon a time, I listened to the same speech that you are listening to now. We all did. You don't have to worry." It took her a moment to realized that he wasn't angry at her, though she dropped her head anyway.

Though some seemed willing to ignore her outburst, others were glaring at her quite venomously, and the girl who had scoffed at the first-years before was looking livid.

"As my little friend has so graciously reminded me, we also have another thing to take note of, which is the Sorting Hat's song every year, and the words that have been used to describe Hufflepuff and the rest of the houses. Being loyal and true, and unafraid of hard work, however appetizing that may be, isn't worth much compared to people with nerve and daring, or cunning folk, or wise ones. But there is something that I've learned from my years here."

He went over to the girl and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I want you to do me a favor."

"How's that?" she asked, trying to be bold but suddenly anticipating having to do some sort of ridiculous Hufflepuff hazing.

"What's your favorite animal?"

She answered with the first thing that came to mind. "A giraffe," she said listlessly. That wasn't true, indeed, her favorite animals were squirrels, but that didn't sound particularly intimidating.

"Giraffe!" He turned away from the first-year again to now fast the rest of the common room. "An animal of central Africa, who lives peacefully with its herd, sharing its land with whatever other creatures come its way. Though it's not a aggressive animal, it's not afraid to give any predator a few good kicks if it gets in the way. That's about right, isn't it?"

Most Hufflepuffs shrugged, a few girls giggling, and a voice from the back said, "Sure, go with it."

"Well, that means a lot. What I mean is that an animal, a person, what have you- they can have different traits, definitely. They aren't stuck with a black or white choice, but it varies in shades of gray. Just because we love our friends doesn't mean we're idiots without a lick of courage in us. We just tend to put more focus on that part of us. For example, I know that I'm a chicken when it comes to Quidditch, or even broom flying." Several people laughed, and he grinned in a sort of affectionate way. "Can't stand heights. But I also know that I'm better at transfiguration then any Ravenclaw that I know, all modestly put aside. Just because they love their books doesn't mean they're any good at it. But we're fail-proof."

He looked back at all the first-years, suddenly stern. "You know why? We're fail-proof, because we know hard work. We have to assert ourselves like this. We work hard, and when we do our part, we become great. We are the badgers, and in this I want us all to think on our animal icon. They're not cuddly or nice at all, really. They have powerful arms for digging, and vicious sharp claws. Badgers are dangerous. They don't take anything from anyone. They know how to dig, and that's what they do. They've dug, they're digging, and they always will dig. We are not fallible. We are the backbone of this school, whether they- or we- like it or not. We are not second rate to anyone here. Don't let anyone even tell you otherwise."

His strong voice finally quieted, and he sat back onto his chair by the fire.

The female prefect seemed to know that his speech had ended.

"Boys- that door there leads to your dormitory. Girls, follow me."

The rest of the house began to slowly file out towards their dormitories as well, but the last thing that the girl saw when she left the common room was the boy, still sitting in the chair with his head resting in his hands, staring into the fire.

The prefect directed them to their rooms, and each first-year claimed a bed. As she scrapped the trunk beneath her bed and flopped down on her four-poster, she stared up at the ceiling. After a long moment of pondering, she turned over onto her stomach to go to sleep, having made up her decision.

She would write to her father and tell him that she was in Hufflepuff, and that was that.

He wouldn't understand, and maybe she didn't, either. She knew that she _couldn't_ understand- she had only been in Hogwarts one night, after all. She wouldn't be able to understand for a while yet, until she heard the hisses of sarcasm against her house and felt the shame that she would have felt this morning, had she known. She wouldn't understand until she felt the defensiveness that she would now have to feel - a feeling that would soon turn to love.

She didn't like it, not yet, but she had resigned herself to it.

She would make do.


End file.
